Lorain Police Department's Payne brothers save lives using Narcan

Stephanie Metzger/smetzger@MorningJournal.com
Lorain Police officers Craig Payne (left) and his brother, Brent Payne, saved a man’s life using Narcan, an antagonist for opiates, after the man apparently overdosed on heroin.

LORAIN — Lorain police officer Brent Payne remembers the 10-year-old boy who greeted him at the door.
The boy’s father lay on the floor of their home, unresponsive because of a heroin overdose, Payne recalls. As other officers tended to the father, Payne remembers seeing the boy retreat to a table to color, as if nothing was wrong in his home.
Payne and his brother, Craig Payne, also a Lorain Police Department officer, have seen the dangerous effects of heroin overdose, but recently, they’ve seen how lives can be saved by a 30-second solution.
Narcan, also known as Naloxone, was implemented by the Lorain Police Department just more than two months ago to prevent deaths because of heroin overdose. The drug binds itself to the opiate in the body and seals it off, reversing the effects.
Brent Payne worked for the Lorain County Sheriff’s Office for a decade before joining the Lorain force about two years ago. Craig Payne served as a paramedic for 12 years until he became a Lorain officer nine years ago.
The brothers, who are Elyria natives, both knew they wanted to serve their community because their father was a sheriff’s deputy.
Family is important to the brothers, and the tragic effects of heroin addiction have reinforced their hope to combat Lorain’s heroin epidemic.
“(Narcan is) a 2-milligram bottle and comes with a nosepiece that you turn on as an atomizer,” Brent Payne explained. “It makes an aerosol mist that you spray into one of the nostrils.”
The antidote, which takes anywhere between 30 seconds to one minute to take effect, has no side effects. According to Craig Payne, a Narcan dosage is harmless, even if the recipient has not used any opiates.
There are signs that indicate whether officers should administer Narcan to an unresponsive person or not. Typically, the person has shallow breathing, is not breathing at all, or might be blue in color. Sometimes, the family background says enough.
“The family tells a lot,” Brent Payne said. “Either they are addicted to heroin, they have a past for heroin abuse, or just offer knowledge from prior incidents or encounters.”
“Sometimes they overdose and the needle’s still in their arm,” Craig Payne added.
The brothers have administered Narcan five times and so far, it’s proved successful for them.
“To my knowledge, all the persons I’ve used it on all survived,” Brent Payne said. “In all those cases, by the time they were transported to the ambulance, they were talking and walking to the ambulance on their own power. Unless something drastic went wrong at the hospital, it has worked.”
Dr. Stephen Evans, the Lorain County coroner, implemented the use of Narcan in county police departments, including Elyria, Amherst and the sheriff’s office.
Evans put on a course for officers to teach them about the drug and how to properly use it. Although Narcan has saved a number of lives, Brent Payne says he was not always a fan of it.
“I was kind of an opponent of using this at first,” he said. “But after using it a couple times, I see the reason behind it.”
“Word travels fast out on the street,” Brent Payne explained. “Now that some of these people know that police are carrying the Narcan, my instant thought was the incidents were going to increase because they’d say, ‘The police will be here to save us.’”
After seeing the effects that heroin abuse has on families, he said he understands the importance of Narcan, especially with the incident involving the 10-year-old boy whose father he helped save.
“He was calm as could be and led me to where his father was at on the ground,” Brent Payne recalled. “He could clearly see that his father was blue and unresponsive, but it was almost like he was conditioned to believe that this was the norm. All he simply did was sit down and color as all the commotion was taking place, as if this was a normal, everyday thing.”
Craig Payne said he’s a proponent of the drug, though he hopes citizens don’t assume it will save all lives.
“Just because we used it and we saved you today, doesn’t mean that was to give you another day to use again,” he explained. “It would be nice if they would come to and realize how close they were to dying and maybe that would scare them enough to know they need help.”
The brothers feel that reducing Lorain’s heroin epidemic must begin within the homes of families. “There are a lot of signs that you can look for,” Craig Payne said. “You see track marks, they’re selling off their property, they’re starting to steal from stores. Parents need to be more aware and give better education to the younger ones at home.”
Though the epidemic is too widespread to be terminated at once, the brothers say they are doing their parts to save any family they can.